At the vet’s recently, because Cat the Ripper has had a stroke, his back-end’s gone skew-whiff, he’s old so apparently these things can be expected, I saw on the counter a brochure from an animal-health company. ‘Is your dog missing out on playtime?’ it asked. Of course there was an accompanying picture: a white pooch, its head softly resting on the carpet and eyes looking glumly into the distance (impersonating a writer perhaps), an abandoned chew-toy on the other side. ‘They could be suffering from osteoarthritis,’ was the answer provided.
Being a writer, and a pedant, which is a dangerous combination, I noticed that clunky they. In my old-fashioned opinion, a singular dog cannot be a they. So as I waited with Cat the Ripper in his carry-box for us to be called into the consultation room, I silently rearranged the sentence: ‘He or she could be suffering from osteoarthritis.’ Still clunky, plus the sentence should be more precise. ‘Osteoarthritis could be the cause.’ But we need that suffering word; at least the animal-health company does. It forces us to relate to and empathise with the four-legged members of the family. We need to know they might be in pain, or uncomfortable, or just plain unhappy. Then we can act.
Artists, writers especially, are besotted with the idea of suffering. They (and I’m using that they to hypocritically distance myself from the others of my ilk, or ink) explore it, try to resolve it; some even wallow in it, creatively, or personally, or both. Thankfully we (ah now I’m back amongst the fold!) have the ability to analyse and order and communicate. We use words to make sense of it all; sometimes we can make it all go way. Think of a novel and its heart will be suffering. Gillian Mears’ extraordinary but distressing Foal’s Bread (2011) is an example. So is Tolstoy’s novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886). Even amongst the articles of this newspaper, every story, the sports ones too, and the latest weather report, there is that thing: suffering, or the potential for it.
Needless to say, dogs aren’t that interested in this philosophical stuff – they just be – and Cat the Ripper has other things on his mind. So we have vets to act as our intermediaries, and we have animal-health companies with their questionable grammar. In the end, everything hinges on language, doesn’t it.
(First published in Panorama, The Canberra Times, 15 December 2012.)
Under the counter or a flutter in the dovecote 
18 comments
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December 16, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Dec
Gabrielle Bryden
haha – I find myself doing the same grammatical permutations when faced with similar signage or advertising. Poor Cat the Ripper – hope he is coping ok. I agree that suffering is often the cornerstone of a good novel and language is the key (for those who use language). There can be great suffering without language as well – woof! (we have had this human centric debate before I recall – and I got into trouble – haha).
December 16, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Dec
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Gabe, suffering as a cornerstone of creativity – I like it, even if it does seem just a little pompous of me to say it like that! But you getting into trouble here at UTC? What was that about? PS I’m glad to see you’re still around – not much action on your blog of late?
December 16, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Dec
Gabrielle Bryden
It was a debate about how the importance of place is a particularly human thing and I said that was rubbish and one of your readers took offence (but you didn’t – haha) – I think that was it (but I do have a bad memory some times). I’ve been moving house and too busy to blog, not to mention many hassles with the internet connection as I have to have wireless instead of ADSL and my reception is a bit unpredictable. We are still moving really as much of the furniture is yet to arrive – we are sleeping on the floor on blow up mattresses – all very cosy – haha Time is going so fast my head is spinning. I will be blogging in the next few days – have missed the blogosphere.
December 16, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Dec
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Gabe, ah yes, I remember – I’ll have to go looking for that post…
I’m glad that you’re heading back to the blogosphere. I hope things settle down with your move. And I know all about dodgy internet connections in regional Australia – the slowness and the unreliability drive me insane!
December 16, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Dec
Bernard
Novels usually have some transcendance as well as suffering.
I finer examination of of the text sometimes reveals sentiment being mistaken for suffering,amongst other ‘things’.
December 17, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Dec
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Bernard, welcome. I like that: ‘novels usually have some transcendance as well as suffering’. But perhaps the key word in that observation is ‘usually’. Mears’ ‘Foal’s Bread’ doesn’t have a great deal of transcendence, but Tolstoy’s ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’ certainly does. I’ll have to think about sentiment = suffering. Very interesting.
December 17, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Dec
Mark William Jackson
From a poetical point of view, we (me and others!) can stand high aloft our “fine” art pedestal, looking down into the great valley of prose writers antagonising over grammar. Clunkiness is to be avoided at all cost, but grammatical correctness takes a much lower priority!
The answer:
“Osteoarthritis.
the dog
suffers”
Of course this is open for one of your infamous arguments 😉
Please pass on my best to Cat.
December 17, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Dec
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Mark, ah yes, clunkiness is to be avoided at all cost, though I think that grammatical correctness is actually very important. Yeats said, ‘Find the place where passion and precision are one’, and I agree with him.
BUT…your answer is perfect, absolutely perfect.
Let the arguments begin!
December 17, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Dec
Mark William Jackson
You offer as a response an Irish man enslaved to the form! Pshaw, I say, give me a futurist, Poundian perspective.
December 17, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Dec
Nigel Featherstone
Did I give you a man enslaved, or a man who was so totally and utterly committed to his craft? Perhaps total commitment equals enslavement, I don’t know. But I do value complete and utter precision, whatever form that might take.
December 17, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Dec
Mark William Jackson
Although I must add that I love Bill Butler, and will soon be staying around the corner from his old rooming house in the Bloomsbury area of Camden. Now I’ll argue with myself, I think it was Frost who said writing free verse is like playing tennis without a net.
December 17, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Dec
Nigel Featherstone
Oh you lucky thing! And Frost? Another genius. Who’d know a fair bit about precision.
December 17, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Dec
Mark William Jackson
I also like Frost who once, when a woman pointed out a beautiful sunset, he replied “I never talk business after dinner.”
But form? I respond with Bukowski ( a great polariser of ever there was one) who said “when the talent wanes, the form appears”.
December 17, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Dec
Nigel Featherstone
Ah, I love that Frost incident. Brilliant. And Bukowski: of course, I like him very much, but I’ll have to think more about what he’s saying there. Because perhaps it’s possible that it’s when the talent rears up and is really ready to go that the work’s form really appears?
December 20, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Dec
whisperinggums
Interesting comment re Bukowski … I think I’ll stand on the fence and say both make sense – the resorting to form when the inspiration has gone, and yet I find that form is often a critical component of the inspired work.
As for suffering, it seems to me that through suffering we get to the essence of what we are about … suffering can force us to shed all the pretences with which we often cloak ourselves. It’s why I “like” Holocaust stories because we learn so much about humanity when we read of those who cause, experience or ignore suffering.
December 20, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Dec
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Sue, yes, form – or structure – is very important, at least it is for me and also for the work I enjoy. As to suffering, there’s always a risk with associating these things with the infamous ‘suffering artist’, that you have to be miserable and an addict of some kind to create something worthwhile (or, perhaps, just worthy). But I agree with you entirely that when we’re suffering we know ourselves and others best. Though perhaps when we’re truly happy we also reveal something about ourselves? So, going back to the point that Bernard raised earlier, a work that has real depth and resonance might have suffering, transcendence, and joy?
December 21, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Dec
Tristan
Hi Nigel. Really sorry to hear about Cat the Ripper – it’s horrible to have to watch a pet, and buddy, suffer. Is there the chance of Cat making a recovery?
Great post. You touch on something – the desire to put suffering into words – that interests me a lot. It’s already been said that it’s the cornerstone to creativity, and to a good story. And I think writers (and artists and marketers and journalists etc.) know this and it’s why more than a handful of them, or us, hang onto it when it comes around – the Romantic, “suffering” ones among us, anyway.
I’ve got a few things to think about from this one.
December 21, 2012 at 9:16+00:00Dec
Nigel Featherstone
Thanks Tristan, as always. Ah, the desire to put suffering into words. Maybe, in the end, it is what writing – all art – is about? Yes, there’s so much to think about on this one – fancy how a trip to the vet could result in so much! I’ve been thinking a lot about the whole ‘suffering – transcendence – joy’ trip, if trip is the right word, it probably isn’t. But the Romantics: they know more than they let on!